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Want to sell more fries? Put salads on the menu
I'm only getting to this now because of the swine flu craziness this week, but a remarkably counter-intuitive study recently came out that concerns the food choices people make.
The basic conclusion is that, if you're a restaurant like McDonald's and you want to sell more french fries, the very best thing you can do is add a side salad to your menu.
In reality, a billboard for fries?
Told you this was a bit odd.
Anyway, that's the conclusion from a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research (see abstract), the basic findings of which are outlined in this news release. In their study, the scientists:
Posted by Eric Berger at May 2, 2009 07:48 AM
http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2009/05/post_82.html
I'm only getting to this now because of the swine flu craziness this week, but a remarkably counter-intuitive study recently came out that concerns the food choices people make.
The basic conclusion is that, if you're a restaurant like McDonald's and you want to sell more french fries, the very best thing you can do is add a side salad to your menu.
[FONT=verdana, arial, helvetica, san-serif]Flickr[/FONT]
In reality, a billboard for fries?
Told you this was a bit odd.
Anyway, that's the conclusion from a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research (see abstract), the basic findings of which are outlined in this news release. In their study, the scientists:
Asked research participants to select a food item from one of two pictorial menus. Half of the participants saw a menu of unhealthy items, including only french fries, chicken nuggets and a baked potato with butter and sour cream. The rest of the participants were given the same three options, plus the choice of a side salad. When the side salad was added, a few consumers did actually choose it. However, the vast majority of consumers did not, and went toward unhealthier options. Ironically, this effect was strongest among those consumers who normally had high levels of self-control.
"In this case, the presence of a salad on the menu has a liberating effect on people who value healthy choices," Fitzsimons said. "We find that simply seeing, and perhaps briefly considering, the healthy option fulfills their need to make healthy choices, freeing the person to give in to temptation and make an unhealthy choice. In fact, when this happens people become so detached from their health-related goals, they go to extremes and choose the least healthy item on the menu."
Two other test menus showed the same effect. "We also had participants choose from menus contrasting a bacon cheeseburger, chicken sandwich and fish sandwich with a veggie burger," Block said. "And we tried chocolate covered Oreos, original Oreos and golden Oreos against a 100-calorie pack of Oreos and obtained the same result."
"Adding the healthier option caused people with high self-control to choose the least healthy option possible. Even though it was not their first choice before the healthy option was included," Block said.
If this effect is real, it's useful for consumers to know it and recognize it (hence, the purpose of this blog entry). Secondarily, if you're looking to improve the choices kids make at school, it may be necessary to take pizza and french fries off the menu entirely.Posted by Eric Berger at May 2, 2009 07:48 AM
http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2009/05/post_82.html
